At a recent Alltech Symposium Senior Vice President of the Alltech Ag Network Billy Frey served as a moderator throughout the afternoon and kicked things off with some background.
In 1988, a sort of high-water mark for the milk industry, the average annual consumption for fluid milk peaked at almost 230 pounds per person.
Since 1993, the Got Milk campaign has been a fixture of TV ads, magazines and billboards. One of the more recent ads, features race-car-driver, Danica Patrick. This is a $50 million yearly campaign funded by milk producers.
“The mustache is catchy, it has raised awareness, but it has not raised consumption,” Frey noted as he added that a 2011 study showed annual consumption has dropped to about 175 lbs./yr. He calls this “a 1 percent trend that will keep going down.” Price and production is up, but much of this is going into cheese or the latest craze, Greek yogurt.
Branding is an overused term but it is still “the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships, that taken together, account for consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another,” according to Seth Godin, marketing expert.
An article in the March 21 edition of the Wall St. Journal touts the Michigan Wolverines basketball team’s use of chocolate milk in their pre-game workout regimen as no small part of their success.
But this shouldn’t be news. As early as 2006, in a study by Indiana University, it noted “ … this study suggest that chocolate milk, with its high carbohydrate and protein content, may be considered an effective alternative to commercial fluid replacement and carbohydrate replacement for recovery from exhausting, glycogen-depleting exercise.”
Frey wants farmers to become storytellers. He argues that the facts are on their side. There has been plenty of controversy over the use and presence of rSBT in milk. But regardless of how you personally feel about it, he notes, for example, that the all-too-typical soy latte drink (chosen by consumers perhaps for its supposed healthier content) from Starbucks, contains more than 1,000 times the amount of hormones than one glass of milk. But somewhere along the way, the bigger megaphone was grabbed by someone with a different story to tell. The facts: that high-fat dairy products actually decrease obesity, promote a healthy heart (through linoleic acid content), and that many folks are calcium deficient, have gotten lost.
So somehow, farmers need to be telling this story. He advocates for a one-to-one or in some cases one-to-few approach.
In a suggestion that might require some farmers to venture outside their comfort zone, he proposed encountering a mom in the milk aisle at the grocery store, noting that women still make 85 percent of the family purchases.
A show of hands didn’t reveal 100 percent of those in attendance using Facebook or some social media but Frey encouraged farmers to take a little time each day and use those free tools to further tell the story of their product, “The perfect protein” as he called their milk. Another presenter suggested that farmers invite folks out to their operations and make sure their local FFA chapter knows about them.
The hardest part, he noted, “Is getting started, taking that first step. But listen to moms, know the facts and engage people.”
It can start with the simple phrase, “I make milk.”
